Death Quotes

He had refused fancy clothes or makeup for this interview. His philosophy was that death should to be embarrassing, he was not about to powder its nose.

~ Mitch Albom

Death is a mirror that gives us a glimpse of who we really are.Death is a rearview mirror that puts the past into perspective.

~ Mark Batterson

In wartime, she thought to herself, you don’t call a death murder.

~ Sara Sheridan

In the depths of his soul Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying... he simply did not, he could not possibly understand it. The example of a syllogism he had studied in Kiesewetter's logic - Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal-- had seemed to him all his life to be correct only in relation to Caius, but by no means himself. For the man Caius, man in general, it was perfectly correct; but he was not Caius and not man in general, he had always been quite, quite separate from all other human beings...And Caius is indeed mortal, and it's right that he die, but for me, Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my feelings and thoughts-- for me it's another matter. And it cannot be that I should die. It would be too terrible.So it felt to him.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Death is her name,Who walks in her garden of fame,And plucks flowers for her lock,Which has the power to ride a flock.

~ Vinod Varghese Antony

How do you know you're not dreaming? Or not dead?

~ Neo Shamon

What sort of charge against old age is the nearness of death, when this is shared by youth?Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so.Well, the young man is a fool to expect it. For what can be more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false as true? An old man has nothing even to hope. ' Ah, but it is just there that he is in a better position than the young man, since what the latter only hopes he has obtained:The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long.And yet! what is 'long' in a man's life? For grant the utmost limit: let us expect an age like that of the king of the Tartessi, who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty.Nothing seems long in which there is any . last' , for when that arrives, then all the past has slipped away -only that remains which you have earned by virtue and righteous actions.Hours indeed, and days and months and years depart, nor does past time ever return, nor can the future be known.Whatever time each is granted for life, with that he is bound to be content.

~ A.c. Grayling

The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

That was how people got through life, he supposed: by acknowledging death and telling it, “Not today.

~ Molly Ringle

We’re beings toward death, we’re … two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms.

~ Cornel West

When the last leaf falls,what will die within us?

~ Sheniz Janmohamed

O Weep No More ForMe When I Am Gone!

~ Timothy Salter

SOME PEOPLE SIMPLY DO NOT EXIST ANYMORE. GET USED TO IT. QUESTION MARK.

~ Amy King

life is first boredom, then fear.whether or not we use it, it goes,and leaves what something hidden from us chose,and age, and then the only end of age.

~ Philip Larkin

once ruffle-skirted vanity table where I primped at thirteen, opening drawers to a private chaos of eyeshadows lavender teal sky-blue, swarms of hair pins pony tail fasteners, stashes of powders, colonies of tiny lipsticks (p.39)

~ Barbara Blatner

Those who die young, they are cheated,” she said. “Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they’re cheated because they don’t know it’s coming. They don’t have time to move closer, to return home. When you know you’re going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don’t even think you have bones when you’re young, even when you break them, you don’t believe you have them. But when you’re old, they start reminding you they’re there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you’re walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no?

~ Edwidge Danticat

The ancients said that for persons who cultivated body and mind, and who are virtuous and honorable, death is an experience of liberation, a long-awaited rest from a lifetime of labors. Death helps the unscrupulous person to put an end to the misery of desire. Death, then, for everyone is a kind of homecoming. That is why the ancient sages speak of a dying person as a person who is 'going home.

~ Liezi

Like waking up in our home one night to find ourselves in a blazing fire, we must be arsonists of emotion, forcing ourselves to grab only what is truly important to us before our life-rafters collapse in on us and we can no longer escape alive.

~ A.j. Darkholme

There was not an inch of solid ground anywhere in the world for me to call my own. I didn't belong anywhere. Had I disappeared, no one would have noticed.

~ Leigh Hershkovich

the cemetery is the home of those who are not here, come in.

~ Italo Calvino

To die on a dying Earth - I'd live, if only to weep.

~ Joanna Russ

There came to him an image of man’s whole life upon the earth. It seemed to him that all man’s life was like a tiny spurt of flame that blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and that all man’s grandeur, tragic dignity, his heroic glory, came from the brevity and smallness of this flame. He knew his life was little and would be extinguished, and that only darkness was immense and everlasting. And he knew that he would die with defiance on his lips, and that the shout of his denial would ring with the last pulsing of his heart into the maw of all-engulfing night.

~ Thomas Wolfe

Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!...I can't. I can't go on.It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every,every minute?Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.Emily: I'm ready to go back.

~ Thornton Wilder

We are sailing in different boats and possibly we may possess a superior boat, but we must remember that we share the same river called life and death.

~ Aditya Ajmera

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.

~ Irvin D. Yalom

If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we's tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into the shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. Simply the awareness that our mortal lives had a beginning and will have an end enhances the quality of our living. Perhaps it's even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldn't be.

~ Madeleine L'engle

All I desire is to be so happy that I die.

~ Sandeep Kumar Mishra

Those who loves you they do not die with you but they do all that you die to live.And Those who do not love you do not kill you physically but they do all that you wait to die

~ Mohammed Zaki Ansari

Might not live long but I know I'ma die happy.

~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Holy shadows of the dead, I am not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same vi

~ Alexander The Great

Only one wish I have, and that is to die a happy man.

~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Par

~ Omar Khayyám

You can grieve for me the week before I die, if I’m scared and hurting, but when I gasp that last fleeting breath and my immortal soul flees to heaven, I’m going to be jumping over fire hydrants down the golden streets, and my biggest concern, if I have any, will be my wife back here grieving. When I die, I will be identified with Christ’s exaltation. But right now, I’m identified with His affliction.

~ R.c. Sproul

If we listen and observe carefully the dying can teach us important things that we need to learn in preparing for the end of our own life's journey.

~ Robert L. Wise

Death brings release & removal from all evil, every tragedy & all difficulty. Death is not an enemy.

~ Paul P. Enns

God prevented Adam & Even from ETERNAL SINFULNESS by giving them the gift of death, the ability to exit this life & arrive safely in the wondrous life to come. Death, though it would appear to be man's greatest enemy, would in the end, prove to be his greatest friend. Only through can we go to God.

~ Paul P. Enns

He did not seek to efface pain in forgetfulness, he sought to elevate it and to dignify it with hope. He would say, Be careful how you turn to the dead. Don't think of the rotting. Hold your gaze and you will see the living light of your dearly loved departed up above in heaven.

~ Victor Hugo

In theory, the idea of eternity in heaven singing God’s praises sounds really good, but when I realize I have to go through the death part to get there, I’m not quite so enamored with the idea.

~ Kim Hunt Harris

My only stake was the hook I shot in the moon, trying to capture stardom on my way to heaven. Without bravado. Just footsteps plodding me along till my big show. My showstopper. The one where I landed in a place without gravity.

~ Juliet Castle

The syrup of lilies hangs thick and sweet in the air, its cloying scent the traditional mask of death and rebirth: ashes and incense, rain and dirt, and something like rosin. It's the scent Hector associates with God. The scent of heavenly things.

~ Kimberly Morgan